Hunting Dog story

[Bdub]

Hey guys I'm looking for a post someone made about 3-4 years ago. It was a very sentimental story/poem thing that shared feelings for ones hunting dog. The story really touched me and reminded me so much of the special moments we have with out hunting partners.
I'd like to save this in my computer for that sad day when I lose my buddy because it is one of the only things I've read that really paints a great picture of what we share with our hunting dogs.
If anyone remembers this post or is the one that posted it, I'd greatly appreciate it if this was reposted. I tried searching awhile back for it, I remembered it again tonight while my wife and I were discussing heartworm treatment for my dog.

[T-Bone]

Goodbye old friend, may you rest in peace.

We first met in 1997 in the living room of a puppy seller after I responded to a newspaper ad "AKC Labrador Puppies for sale." While your brothers and sisters all begged for attention I watched you snoop around that living room doing your own thing. I couldn’t help but notice you because you were such a stinker you had chewed the fur off the tip of your own tail. I picked you up and you licked my hand, just once, and stared at me and I knew you and I would get along great. The seller offered a discount for the chewed tail and I thought to myself; “sucker!”

After much deliberation we decided to name you Aurora. I read that the name means “Dawn” in Latin and in several mythological cultures Aurora was the Goddess of Dawn or dawn Goddess, so it seemed like a fitting name for a hunting dog that I’d share so many sunrises with over the years.

We brought you home to play with your new brother. Your big brother, my first son, was a little over a year older than you but the two of you got along like best friends from the start. Somehow you seemed to like it when he tugged on your ears and pulled your tail and you sure took off fast when he jumped on your back to go for a horsey ride. You would raise two more brothers through all the same phases over the years and never complain when they did all the same things the first brother did but I'm sure you were happy when they grew out of those phases.

You were such a pain in the neck, you chewed up shoes and hunting gear and even our couch but somehow you never went after the chickens we raised or the kitty cats. I had to replace so many things because you ate them that it wasn’t even funny. Thankfully you didn’t chew the window you broke out of in the bedroom, and how a two year old Lab squeezed through the burglar bars I’ll never know but you managed somehow.

When you were only a few months old we went on our first hunting trip together. It was a cold rainy morning in the marsh down on the coast. You were cold and scared and I tucked you into my jacket and walked you through the mud while you peaked through my collar to see where we were going. We saw a few ducks that day, but I didn’t shoot at anything because you wouldn’t let me put you down so we just watched them fly by and enjoyed the morning together.

We trained hard through the next summer and you grew into the best duck dog I’ve ever seen in person. You would mark the birds and take hand signals just like the dogs on TV shows and I could direct you to an area and command you to sniff out the birds with that awesome nose of yours. Of all the things you were trained to do, my best friend couldn’t get over the fact that you would pee on command and thought that was the funniest thing. All your hard work was well appreciated every time you came back with a bird we would have surely lost in the maze of marsh brush that covers everything. When you retrieved a goose that had to have glided down a full ½ mile away, you have no idea how happy I was that I didn’t have to lug through the marsh mud in my waders to go get that bird. I couldn’t even see you for a full 10 minutes on that retrieve and couldn’t help but laugh when you emerged from the cat tails across the pond with your head tilted sideways and that goose’s bill clamped down tightly onto your ear and chewing on it all the way back to me. You looked so annoyed! Ha!

We watched so many sunrises together, just you and I as we grew up together hunting alone. In the marsh you would sit quietly by my side waiting for your name to be called, on the lake you’d sunbathe on the bow of the boat wondering how I kept dropping that Super Spook floating fishing lure into the water and why I wouldn’t let you retrieve it but you learned not to get excited when a fish came splashing up to the boat. You were my best hunting buddy and were always gung ho to run with whatever stupid idea I came up with. Several times you stood between me and a very large wild boar as we ran face-to-face with him in the wee hours of the morning walking through the muddy trails in the marsh. It seemed as though you and him would have a competition on who could raise the hair on their backs the highest, and though he outweighed you by a good couple hundred pounds you always seemed to win the hair competition and he would chicken out and bail off the trail.

All you ever wanted was to be close to your family and you earned your spot at the foot of the bed where you slept every night because you were well behaved and quiet. There was a night in 2005 that we couldn’t figure out why you wouldn’t come upstairs to bed. We brought you up anyway but you went back downstairs and I was too tired to go get you so just let you be downstairs. Several hours later you went crazy barking and I went downstairs to find you guarding the back sliding glass door which was cracked open about 10 inches. I sent you out and you ran straight to the corner of the privacy fence and barked toward the ditch. Then I knew why you wouldn’t come up that night. I don't know how you knew, but thank you, old friend, for looking after the family that night.

We had so many great times hunting together, but all great things must come to an end and I knew it was time when that winged Redhead duck out-swam you. You swam after it for what seemed like an eternity. I saw your swim speed come to a crawling pace and I went out and finally stopped that duck with a final shot. You swam up to me and took that duck right out of my hand, you would not give up on that or any other retrieve and you carried that duck all the way back to where we sat and gave it back to me. It was, after all, your job to go get the ducks and you were bound and determined to complete that job at all cost. We bagged up the decoys and then I watched you struggle to walk through the mud and you whimpered as your rear legs seemed to be stuck in the mud. I carried you into the marsh on your first hunting trip, and now I would carry you out of the marsh on your last hunting trip… you were now officially retired as a hunting dog.

Although you’re officially retired from hunting now it wouldn’t be the end of your outdoors trips. You still liked to go to the beach with us. You sure loved all the smells, no matter how bad those smells were and when you found a smell worthy enough you would roll around in the sand over it which was the same color as your fur so if you didn’t move I couldn’t see you. Somehow you always managed to find the most stinky rotten hardhead or dead fish carcass on the entire beach and bring it back to camp to chew on. I didn’t bother taking them away because you’d just go out and find another one with that big nose of yours.

About the time the tough beach conditions looked to be too rough on you it broke my heart when you quit coming upstairs to bed. Those old hips just wouldn’t generate the force needed to get you up and down anymore. I shed a tear several times knowing what was coming and felt so bad leaving you downstairs, but you didn’t seem to mind so we let you be. Sometimes after a thunderstorm would roll through we would wake to find you sleeping outside of our bedroom door, it must have been so hard for you to get up those stairs but you were afraid enough that you pushed through it because you wanted to be close to me. You’ll never know how much I regret having the bedroom door closed those nights and I wish I could go back and change that but it’s just too late now.

I regret now allowing you to sit on the couch next to me and I regret not feeding you all the table scraps you could ever eat. I regret having to watch you over the last year having trouble getting up to walk around and I regret pulling out our carpet and putting in tile that made it even harder on you. I regret having my door closed when the thunderstorms brought you upstairs and I regret not carrying you upstairs every single night to be with your family. I’ll never regret buying the discounted puppy that day almost 16 years ago and I’ll never regret a second of the time we spent together or going through all the rascally things you’ve done.

I can’t believe you’re finally gone now. You hung on for so long and you were such a tough dog. So many times you ate piles of chicken wing bones or whole chickens when you raided the trash bags and entire bags of Easter candy, oreo cookies, and chocolate that you found on the floor when we came back from shopping and left them out. You stood up against big hogs in the marsh and burglars at home, avoided rattlesnakes at the ranches and ran off coyotes at the beach. You had so many close calls and always came back when you ran away to play. You beat everything life threw at you so I halfway expected you to beat the needle that we gave you to end your suffering, but I guess it was time and you were ready because you finally gave in and let go. Perhaps you gave it because you thought that’s what I wanted, but I would give almost anything to have another 15.5 years with you at my side. I can only hope I gave you as good of a life as you have given me. Just like I carried you into the marsh on our first trip together and out of the marsh on our last trip together, when your ashes are returned to me and I'm ready to let go I'll carry you out one last time at sunrise so we can watch it together one last time. Goodbye old friend, you will be missed so much.

[B-Stealth]

Excellent story, and I'm not crying I have bad allergies.

The Easter Basket hit home, my old lab was a puppy when he decided to eat the Easter Basket plastic grass and all. He spent a couple nights at the vet for that one.

[Bdub]

Thank you!